Why I Care/How It Impacts Recovery – In order to form healthy relationships it is important to first be okay with yourself. – People with strong self esteem do not need others to validate them, or tell them they are good enough. – Self-esteem means recognizing your worth as a person What is Self Esteem – Self-esteem is the way you feel about yourself. – It is your evaluation of your real-self compared with your ideal-self. – Your ideal self is who you believe you should be. – Your real-self is who you are with all of your inherent strengths and imperfections. Where Does Self-Esteem Come From – Children form their concept of the ideal-self at an early age based upon conditions of worth – When they do something right and get praise, they feel proud. – Too often we forget to praise children for who they are, and not just what they do. – Due to children's immature reasoning, many things are overgeneralized and made into global, stable and internal attributions, creating an unrealistic ideal-self. – Often, parents use the term “bad boy/girl” which says to the child I am bad if I….

What is Self Esteem – Activity: – On a sheet of paper, describe your ideal self – Review the qualities – Mark out any of those that are not important to you. – Highlight the ones you already have. – The rest are ones that you want to develop to the best of your ability – Step 1: Define it. – Example: “Successful” means what to you? – Step 1a: Examine why it is important to you – Example: What would be different if you were successful? – Step 2: Make a plan – Step 3: Do it

Improving Self-Esteem – To improve self-esteem, you must – Change the way you feel about yourself (i.e. change your feelings about your self-evaluation) – Focus on your strengths – Aim for effort, not perfection – Decide if some of the “ideal” characteristics are important to you – Change yourself – Likely there are some areas in which you want to improve – Make a plan to tackle them ONE at a TIME Improving Self-Esteem

– Make a list of positive affirmations and add one new one each day – When you find a fault in yourself, remind yourself of three positive qualities – Do not minimize your accomplishments. Take credit where credit is due. – Surround yourself with people who are positive and encouraging – Instead of complaining about faults, take positive action Improving Self-Esteem

– If there is something you feel “bad” about that is impossible to change, then add a new, positive quality. – Do a good deed every day – Make changeable, specific attributions for negative events – Patience– changes do not happen overnight – Accept your fears and work with and through them. Nobody is perfect.

Improving Self-Esteem – Evaluate whether you hold yourself to a higher standard than you hold everyone else. – Do you think you are that much better than everyone else, or do you just need a reason to beat yourself up? – Manage your inner critic – Focus on what goes well for you. – Caring about what people think about you is good. Worrying about what they think is pointless. – Aim for effort rather than perfection.

Improving Self-Esteem – View mistakes as learning opportunities. – Remind yourself that everyone excels at different things. Stop comparing other people's strengths to your weaknesses. – Use insecurities to your advantage. – Recognize what you can change and what you can't. – Take pride in your opinions and ideas

Apply It – Identify 3 ways you could have used this information in the past week. – What was the situation? – What did you do? – How effective was that for you? – Short term – Long Term – If you would have had this new information, what could you have done differently? – How would that have changed the outcome? – How can you start integrating this knowledge into your routine Summary – As you start to like yourself and recognize your worth, your demeanor will likely change – You will realize you do not need people to tell you that you are okay. You already know that! – You will find yourself surrounded by people who do not need you to tell them they are okay either. – You will not be as afraid to create distance between yourself and those who bring negativity into your life. – You will have freed up energy to make positive changes in your life because you are no longer worried about getting other people’s approval.

AllCEUs started providing affordable CEUs and counseling continuing education, including online ceus and webinar based counseling ceus, in 2006 to help counselors licensed by their state board of professional counseling or state board of alcohol and drug abuse access affordable counselor continuing education, meet their continuing education requirements and enhance their addiction or mental health counseling practice. Since then, other companies have joined the marketplace to provide lpc continuing education including quantumunitsed, ce4less, Aspira aspirace, tzkseminars, i-counseling, accessceu, CEUbynet, pdresources. AllCEUs pioneered the model of offering unlimited CEU packages for a flat rate. We also were the first to offer live webinars each week for $5 per counseling webinar. We pride ourselves on having the largest catalog, with well over 200 multimedia, online counseling CEU courses. AllCEUs is an approved continuing education provider by the Connecticut Certification Board, The Florida Certification Board, FCB, The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counseling Board of Georgia, ADACB-GA, NAADAC, the association for addiction professionals, the Texas Board of Social Work, The Texas Board of Professional Counseling, The Texas Board of Marriage and Family Therapy, California Consortium of Addiction Programs and Professionals, the Florida Board of Social Work, Mental Health Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy and many other boards. It is important to note that, in most states, CEUs are NOT required to be NBCC approved, and most states accept ceus which are NOT from an NBCC approved continuing education provider or ACEP. For specific information about which other approval bodies your state accepts, you can visit our approvals page: https://cdn1.allceus.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/NewStateApprovalChart2017-1.pdf which provides a summary and links to the documents of the various state licensing boards for counselors, therapists and social workers. For mental health counselors, social workers and marriage and family therapists in Florida, AllCEUs reports your counseling CEUs to CE Broker. Whether you are a LCSW, MSW, LMFT, LMFT LMHC, LPC, LPCC, LCPC, CCMHC, MHC, CADC, LADC, CAP, LCDC, recovery coach, psychotherapist, pastoral counselor, addiction counselor, substance abuse counselor, recovery specialist, behavioral health technician needing mental health or addiction counseling CEUs online, or wanting to get certified as an addiction professional, AllCEUs has a variety of affordable online counseling CEUs, online addiction counselor certificate training tracks and face to face training options. Our unlimited CE packages provide professional counselor continuing education (CEUs) in addiction counseling, transdisciplinary foundations of addiction counseling, screening and assessment, diagnosis, family therapy, pharmacology, psychopharmacology, case management, crisis intervention, counseling tools, dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness, acceptance and commitment therapy, ethics, supervision, working with adolescents, and many more.